Photo by Greg Becker Beethoven went for a vigorous walk after lunch, and he always carried a pencil and a couple of sheets of paper in his pocket, to record chance musical thoughts. Gustav Mahler followed much the same routine—he would take a three- or four-hour walk after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in…

An annual ritual at this time in our house is the printing of the family calendar. This is a homegrown solution as I couldn’t find a simple version for sale. The versions in the shops are very professional, but waste a lot of space on interesting and exciting pictures. With five of us in the family we…

Thanks to Tim for the tip on this excellent audio drama which kept me company, and occasionally shocked me, on a long solo drive to Devon and back. When a plane crashes in west Wales, a dark mystery begins to unfold. A major conspiracy thriller, starring Romola Garai. Written by Matthew Broughton. “The story of…

Photo by Krisitina Dobo The Eisenhower Decision Matrix: How to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important Tasks | The Art of Manliness. Thanks to Nick for suggesting this article to me. I like the idea, I enjoyed reading the other Eisenhower articles, and the site generally looks really interesting. Of specific interest to me at the…

Photo by John Blyberg Ray Kurzweil: Online education is where we were in ebooks 4 years ago – people saying they still want printed books, that the ebook reading experience isn’t very good… Well, today most books are ebooks. You see the same complaints about online education. Well, just wait. Four years from now, you’ll…

Recently I’ve started running. (First proper exercise in about 20 years!) Its only every other day and I’m doing very simple and gentle stuff. It’s actually a lot easier than I thought and the recent good weather has definitely helped. I started using Runkeeper to help me track progress – this has been really beneficial….

This Emoticon-A-Day Calendar Lets You Creatively Catalog Your Mood | via Co.Design: business + innovation + design. I wonder whether this, or a version of this, could be used within projects in order to gauge the confidence of those involved in the project? Over time, the change in the smileys would be interesting to observe…

[Technical] Debts are often best tackled by paying off the principal lump sum. In the case of “technical debt”, Mr Lesokhin believes this involves committing resources to work out which parts of banks’ dormant code are most likely to turn zombie to avoid potentially calamitous consequences. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21280943

In Richard Sennett’s new book ’Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation‘, he explores the history of cooperation and posits that most tactics that we commonly use are actually making it harder to reach a position of real cooperation. There are four key skills Professor Sennett believes we all need to get better at if we…

I was asked this week: “what’s a MOOC?” by someone who probably should have known by now what a MOOC is. As a professional, I refrained from this behaviour: If you’re after a description, a look at this video (under 5 mins) gives an overview – albeit from 2010. And more in-depth reading…

At a work meeting today we had an exciting chance to see the emerging ideas for our University’s new library extension. These were presented by the architects who did a great presentation – very refined and to the point, and without too much “architectese”. They then turned the tables and set a workshop session for…